After rain events, the water discharged into coastal waters is known as stormwater. Stormwater discharges (an example is shown in FIG. 1), can carry with them a host of pollutants in the form of contaminated sediment. These events span coastal sites, including nearly every DoD coastal site, and are linked to all aspects of regulatory compliance including pollution discharge permitting, source control strategies, and environmental restoration programs which cost the Navy hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
The fact that these events do not occur as point sources make them extremely difficult to characterize and control. Sediment transport models often do not have enough resolution to resolve stormwater discharges and current field-based sampling strategies such as sampling near the outfalls only provides indirect evidence as to the transport, impact, and the ultimate fate of the contaminated sediment in the coastal waters.